We have all witnessed injustice in our lives before. Whether it is receiving a ticket for parking 30 seconds before your time was up, or talking to an unhelpful and rude customer service agent, life is sometimes harsh and some people sometimes get away with certain injustices. However, with the emergence of big data, there is some light that these injustices can be stopped.
Let’s take a look at big data for a second. Big data allows us to collect all kinds of information; from tracking workers on GPS, voice recognition technology, and even information from emails and phone messages. This means that companies today can track their employees’ every action and decision and hold them responsible for it. Information from GPS tracker tells a company of its employee’s location. Big Data can analyze this information and recognize specific patterns. Take a traffic warden for example. If Big Data shows that the warden stops at a specific place and time constantly, it will immediately reveal their predatory intentions. This would make an appeal for a ticket much easier and justice would be served. Furthermore, we can expect that a traffic warden will be forced to fix his behavior as he knows that his every move and decision is being watched and open to analysis.
Similarly voice recognition technology has also improved justice in the customer service sector. Voice recognition allows companies to track the quality of the calls that their agents make. Big data can further improve this by tracking every word and setting it against the satisfaction metrics of the agent. Thus would motivate the agent to be much more helpful during a call. Who knows, one day big data might also be able to track the tone of the agent. Just like voice recognition, Big Data can also track an employee’s emails and messages. By analyzing the content of the messages, big data can help companies track their employees that make fake promises or employees that do not comply with company rules and such.
However, as Big Data can be used to fix certain injustices, many ethical and moral questions could be raised. One main one question is: should justice be brought at the cost of our freedom?
Big Data and Injustice
21
October
2016
Dear Mounim, thank you for your blog! Indeed, big data can offer many advantages and sometimes even justice. However, I do not think that justice should always be at the cost of our freedom. But of course, this depends very much on the situation. If an employee does something small wrong, something that can be overlooked, then why seek justice? But if something large goes wrong, an accident happens or fraud occurs, that’s where big data can help to find the right person. Of course, for everyone this line of whether or not to include big data is different, making it increasingly diffuclt to decide whether or not to use big data for justice. While I think we should not have our every move watched, maybe having specific rules in place on what data is tracked (e.g. a company keeps track of fraudulent behaviour overall, and if it keeps occuring, they look for the right person), will reduce bad behaviour in itself. While I believe this topic is very interesting, it is also very difficult to determine what and what not to track…
Thank you for your blogpost, it was an interesting read, with in my opinion, a relevant and important question at the end of your blog. I do really believe we don’t want to use big data for our justice at the cost of our freedom. In the end I believe that the use of big data will lead to a situation where everything can be tracked and measured. We will actually become robots that should behave perfect, because otherwise we will get punished. Besides that, data does not have emotions or intuition, and will never really be capable of judging an entire situation right, considering all aspects. Humans can understand why you underperformed last week, because you’re for example in the middle of a divorce.
Hi Mounim,
Interesting read! Really hope this is gonna work in the future but I have my doubts. Computers will always have restrictions and are fixed on certain rates. This is why the injustice will meaby switch on some level to a different victem. Just read this blog post on how algorithms can destroy someone’s life and let me know what you think!
https://www.wired.com/2014/11/algorithms-great-can-also-ruin-lives/
Gr, Peter